


In The Space of a Breath

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, FtM Tony Stark, M/M, trans!Tony Stark, transvengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4733423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like many things in Bruce's life, it happens in the space of a breath. In one breath Tony was just Tony. In the next, he was everything Bruce wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Space of a Breath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littleknowledgesuitsthegreat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleknowledgesuitsthegreat/gifts).



Like most major things in Bruce’s life, it happened in the space of a breath, and Bruce shouldn’t have been surprised. In the space of a breath a monster was released. In the space of a breath Betty was gone. In the space of a breath a chemical reaction went wrong. In the space of a breath his father’s anger went from smoldering to the snap of his mother’s neck.   Bruce shouldn’t have been surprised.

But it was Tony, so it was surprising. In one breath, Tony was genius, Tony was confidence, Tony was energy. In the next, he was want.

Like anything with Tony, though, it was different.

The idea of seeing Tony romantically was about as foreign as whatever alien was going to decide to play romper room with the Earth next. Bruce couldn't see it. Didn't see it. But he saw Tony and Tony did something no one had done in a long, long time: he made Bruce want to do better. He sparked a hope in Bruce that he could do lab work again and make it work. He might not solve his Hulk problem, but he could do good work when Tony was around.

It was Clint who pointed out that it might be more. It was Clint, who was battered and bruised from his last SHIELD mission, whose hair was damp and messy from a shower, who was only wearing purple sweatpants and a threadbare gray t-shirt and gingerly reaching for the eggs on the top shelf of the refrigerator.

“Let me get those for you,” Bruce said, and Clint stepped back with a sheepish nod. Bruce reached for the eggs and set them on the counter before he turned and stared at Clint. “Sit down before you fall down. I make a mean omelet.” Clint looked to Bruce like he might keel over.

“Where’s your other half?” Clint asked. He sat down hard in the nearby chair.

Bruce’s stomach did something odd at the question. “What? Who?”

He looked over to see Clint try and hide a grin with his coffee cup. 

Clint took a gulp of coffee and cocked his head to the side. “Your other half. You know, the one you work with, eat with, and probably want to sleep with?”

It happened in the space of a breath. Tony was the one he worked with, the one he ate with, and yes, Bruce realized that he _did_ want to sleep with him. He cracked the egg in his hand and it splashed across the granite counter top. He looked at Clint, who stood and handed Bruce a paper towel.

“Sorry, Bruce,” he said, and his voice was gentle. “Not my business, but you’ve been looking at him different lately, and you should see how he looks at you. You guys might want to talk.” He shrugged and reached for the eggs at the same time he pushed Bruce away from the counter. “I’ll take you up on that omelet later, okay?”

Bruce found his voice again, after another breath. “It’s not –“ he started. “It’s complicated,” he finished.

Clint pulled a glass bowl from the low cupboard next to Bruce. “Maybe,” he said, and then met Bruce’s gaze. “It doesn’t have to be, though.”

Bruce left Clint to go find Tony, to figure out what had just happened, but he thought he knew. Clint had said, “You probably want to sleep with Tony,” and something had slotted into place in Bruce’s heart. Of course, as he stood in the shiny, silver elevator headed for the lab, he realized it really was complicated. Why would Tony want to be with someone like Bruce? What if he couldn’t be? Bruce’s body wasn’t right. He wasn’t an average guy. He hoped that Tony’s life experience would make him a little more open to a not-average guy, but there was no guarantee. Why would someone choose to be with a guy who had an actual monster inside?

He’d have to see. Now that Clint had mentioned it, it felt like all Bruce could think about. What if? What if they could? He entered the lab and went to work. He’d take his time and think about this. He’d focus on work and worry about this later. He could be quiet and do the work.

But being quiet around Tony never lasted. Tony was fits and spurts, he was energy and motion, and the quiet was always short-lived. Today Bruce watched him solve a problem with their project while talking to Bruce about the problems with Taylor Swift's latest album, and listening to Bruce explain that he hadn't heard the album but here's the music that carried him through a journey in India three years ago. They debated the merits of alternative pop and grunge music and Bruce marveled at Tony's adjustment to the project, and suddenly they'd been in the lab too long for Bruce and he needed a break.

But not from Tony, just from the lab and the metallic odors and dust and all the silver and black. He knew something was different when he deliberately kept Tony with him when they left the lab for a while.

 He didn’t want a break from Tony.

They headed back upstairs to the now-empty kitchen."Do you play chess?" he asked as he watched Tony pull a tub of peanut butter from the cupboard and eat it with a spoon. He tried to ignore that part.

Tony looked up at him and cocked his head. "Someone taught me at some point."

Bruce wondered if he should read into things like that. Is Tony talking about his parents? He never does when they're working, and Bruce knows they had a very rocky relationship until they died. Bruce understands rocky relationships with parents and killed that train of thought as quick as he can. "Do you want to come up to my place and play a couple of games?"

Tony looked down at his spoon and back to Bruce. “Sure?” he said, and Bruce realized that after all this time, they’d never spent any time in their own personal space. It was always the lab, the communal family room, restaurants, parks. They’d taken walks and gotten ice cream, they’d watched old sci-fi movies in the common room and tangled their legs together on the couch, but they’d never gone to their own space. Tony looked a little hesitant.

They went, though, and Bruce fixed a pot of green tea as Tony fingered the books on Bruce’s dusty bookshelf and peppered him with questions about favorite authors and books and ‘why-the-hell-do-you-have-this-piece-of-garbage’ comments from time to time. Eventually, though, they settled down on Bruce’s fluffy couch with the chess board in front of them. Tony seemed nervous, though, as he sipped his tea and fiddled with the pieces.

“Do you want to play?” Bruce asked, but the butterflies in his stomach were busy. What if Tony did want more? What did that mean for either of them?

“Are you finally going to ask?” Tony said without looking at Bruce.

Bruce looked at the grease mark on Tony’s cheek, the way his fingers played with the chess piece and realized what Tony was talking about. He set his tea down on the table. Of course that’s what Tony thought. Of course. How could Bruce have missed this coming? Selfish thoughts, that’s how. He sighed. “Tony,” he started.

“Everyone asks,” Tony said, and stood up with his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. “It’s normal.”

Bruce didn’t really have to ask. Everyone knew. He remembered the media storm that had thundered through the US news twenty years ago when Antonia “Tony” Stark went through transition in one of the first very public events surrounding transgender people. Tony was a child prodigy, a genius, and the daughter of Howard Stark – the biggest name in the science community and in weapons design, and dead. Howard and Maria died when Antonia was 21, and Tony transitioned two years later.

Bruce was in the midst of graduate school, and hadn’t paid much attention. He remembered childhood pictures of Tony in sweet yellow dresses being thrust against pictures of Tony as a teen, covered in grease, hair trimmed short and his masculine glare and stance contrasting the pictures of the unrecognizable small girl who had been paraded around his father’s parties with robots he’d made at age 8. He remembered the media calling scandal, ranting about his parent’s legacy, about betraying family and other bullshit Bruce didn’t want to read.

Tony was Tony, and anyone who said he was fake or just an attention whore was clearly blind to who people really were.

Now Bruce sat on his couch and said, “I hadn’t thought about it, really.” He hadn’t, either. “I just want to be around you.”

Tony snorted and moved to the bookshelf. “Everyone thinks about it. Don’t lie.”

Bruce stood up and went to Tony. He put a hand on Tony’s arm and looked him in the eye.  “Do you think about it?” Bruce asked, because if there’s anything he was wondering about, it was how Tony thought about himself.

Tony glared for a moment, and then he sighed. “Of course I do,” he said. “You ask me here, you get all serious, and I know what’s coming. “

Bruce didn’t consider himself a risk-taker anymore, didn’t do things like this without thinking, but now it seemed like maybe a little less thought is what both of them needed. He leaned over and pressed his lips to Tony’s, brief but gentle, and the feel of Tony’s lips sent a shiver through his body. He leaned back and smiled. “Is that what you thought was coming?”

Tony’s eyes were wide, and he reached up and ran his finger over his lips where Bruce had kissed him. A small grin stole across his face and he shook his head. “No. That’s not what I thought was coming.” He looked back at Bruce. “It’s not that easy, though, Bruce,” he said, and went back to the couch to sit down heavily.

Bruce followed. He ran his hand down Tony’s back and nodded. “I know. But it’s not about the hard stuff right now. I want to spend time with you. I want to be with you however you want me to be and trust me as much as you can.” He paused and looked at Tony without a word until Tony met his gaze. “What do you need me to know?” he asked, and ran a hand down Tony’s bare arm. It was muscled and firm, and Bruce left his hand there in reassurance.

Tony was quiet for a moment and then he shrugged. “It’s not a nickname,” he said finally.

“What?” Bruce asked.

Tony smiled. “I remember that Pepper was the first person who just took my name and used it the way it was meant to be used. It’s my name. Everyone else that got to know me for more than a few days would always try Antonia out, sometimes just for laughs.”

Bruce frowned. “Why would they do that?”  He felt anger stirring in his chest and tried to quell it.

“Because they thought it was my name. That Tony was a nickname. Or they thought Tony should be a nickname. Pepper didn’t. She only ever called me Tony, and I hadn’t even done the hormone thing when we started dating. It’s one way I knew she was the real deal. A good person who might give me a chance.”  He shrugged and laughed bitterly. “Of course, I drove her away for other reasons, but it was never about my body or name. She left because I’m an asshole.”

“That was years ago, Tony,” Bruce said.

He remembered the news of their breakup. The media had come back to Tony’s gender identity when they broke up, even though it had let the subject die by then. It came back and there were tabloids about Tony’s body rejecting the hormones – Bruce hated the idiocy of the media – or Pepper rejecting Tony because he wasn’t a ‘real’ man. “It was all garbage, what the media said, and you’ve lived a lot since Pepper left you.” He laughed, too, and Tony looked at him sharply. “I’ve got my own barrel of issues, too, you know. I’m complicated, too.”

Tony grinned and nodded. “Maybe we could figure some of this stuff out together, huh?”

“We’re good at that, you know,” Bruce said and leaned back on the couch. “Figuring things out.”

Tony reached for his hand and twined their fingers together. “Yeah. We’re pretty good at it.” He paused. “Who knows. Maybe it’ll work. If we’re lucky.”

Bruce smiled, and in the space of a breath Tony was leaning against him, and Bruce let the touch be the start of something new, and risky, and hopefully amazing.


End file.
